Through the Persian Gulf

All’s quiet. “Ivan Kozhemyakin”, the submarine mother ship
is crawling through the Persian Gulf. The commander’s on the
bridge. The commander’s favourite expressions are: “leave
my balls alone” and “stop pricking around”! The night’s pitch-black. In the darkness, on the ship’s starboard, some sort of
coast guard boat is barely discernible. It is accompanying our
mother ship so we “don’t go where we’re not wanted.”

“A flare!” barks the commander. “Otherwise, we’ll
squash it in the dark by mistake, then we’d need to apologise
in English and I only studied English for half an hour, at
school, if you add it all up.”

The commander and English: yes, he’d be mentally
constipated, whereas in Russian, it’s the other way round –
pulsating, seething streams. In the Suez Canal, our mother ship
was at the head, which is why we were entitled to a pilot. When
this dark brother came on board, he greeted the commander:
“Mornink, captin!”

“Hm…” the commander replied.

“How doo yoo doo?”

“Hm…mm…”

And it was forty degrees in the shade. Our lot were
packed onto the bridge: first mate, second mate and other
riff-raff. All wearing ties, service caps and shorts – the
tropical uniform. Heads melting under these puffballs. The
commander made everyone dress up like this: what if they
suddenly ask us “How doo you doo?”

“Doo you speek Inglish?”

“Nao.”

“Oh, captine!”

The commander turned to our lot and said through
clenched teeth:

“Have I asked you, monkey-man, why you don’t speak
Russian?!”

Things were better at night. Cooler.

“One more flare,” said the commander, “they’re not
responding for some reason.”

The mother ship is old, like a container for leftover food. One day the diesel engines stopped working – for three
days, we quietly sailed off somewhere into the distance. As a
general rule, there’s always something breaking down.
The little guard boat still doesn’t reply.

“Well, okay,” said the commander, “let’s blind them
with our floodlights!”

Some time passed as we worked out who’s going to do
the blinding and how to blind them.

Finally, we worked out how to do it. The envoy switched
on the wrong thing and whatever he switched on almost killed
someone or other. Then we switched it on, properly, but again
it was no good.

“Comrade commander, the phase’s blown!”

“God, you whores, you boiled cunts, get all the
electricians here quick!”

The electricians were all standing on the bridge already.

The commander calmed down – after pouring some more filth
on them – and grandly targeted the guard boat.

“Well, now, blind them!”

The floodlights were turned on but they were too weak,
dammit, and didn’t even reach the boat. The com mander looked
at the mechanic and screamed four of our favourite letters.
“On the galley, comrade commander, I think there’s
a good little lamp,” the mechanic illuminates him, “on the
galley!”

“Right, bring it over.”

They made a racket, running up to the galley, unscrewed
the lamp, made a racket running back, screwed it in, switched
it on – it was only slightly better.

And suddenly – a column of fire in our eyes, like the
sun, nothing visible, painful. Everyone’s hands shot up to
cover their eyes. What was going on?

The light rushed over to the side, everyone took their hands from their faces. Ah, so that’s it: the guard boat had lit
us up with their super-powered floodlight.

“Comrade commander,” someone asked after a silence,
“shall we hit them too with our floodlight?”

“Hit them?” the commander comes back to life, “No,
no. That’s enough. And I, like an old fool, said: light up our
brother from the Arab Emirates. Ha! If only one bastard had
said: forget it, comrade com mander, don’t even hope to get
them. But, no! But I still said: light him up! Yeah! If he lights
us again with his flood light, we’ll all drown! What floodlights
are you talking about! You are all dismissed, great nation!”
It’s getting dark. The commander’s alone on the bridge.
He’s suffering.